Note: the new editing box can either be placed in a sortable, draggable box or in a static position on the editing screen. By default, the former is used, but if you experience problems, try switching to the static approach (using the plugin options page in the Settings menu). The issue with using TinyMCE in sortables is documented here:

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/19173

The editing box for excerpts uses wp_editor to create a rich text editor. You can set the options for the rich text editor in the plugin options page (in the WordPress Settings menu).

The plugin also contains two filters which act on the “teeny” MCE editor instance which is used by default. The plugins and buttons used by the minimal editor can also be customised on the plugin options page.

Contribute

Please contribute to the development of this plugin by using it and reporting issues via the WordPress plugins forum. If you are using it successfully, please post a review and rate the plugin.

I’m maintaining this plugin on Github:

https://github.com/bjorsq/rich-text-excerpts

If you would like to make any improvements to the codebase or to translations, please do so by forking it and issuing a pull request when you have made the changes.

All releases are tagged on github, and eventually find their way into the WordPress Plugin Directory.

If you want to use excerpts in Custom Post Types, do it when you create them using the supports array in the arguments for register_post_type.

I activated the plugin, but the rich text editor isn’t working for [pages|custom post types] – why?

This plugin has a settings page where you can configure which post types use a rich text editor for their excerpts – by default only posts will use the rich text editor. The post types displayed on the settings page are only those which support excerpts, so if you don’t see your post type here, it doesn’t support manual excerpts.

If you want to use excerpts in pages, add this to your theme’s functions.php file:

If you want to use excerpts in Custom Post Types, do it when you create them using the supports array in the arguments for register_post_type, or use a plugin like Types.

My excerpts don’t appear on my site with the formatting I apply using the editor – why?

This plugin only adds the ability to edit excerpts in the WordPress admin area using a Rich Text editor. How these excerpts are displayed on your site, or whether they are displayed at all, is the responsibility of the theme you are using.

Most themes will use the ‘correct’ way of displaying hand-crafted excerpts, which is to call get_the_excerpt() outside the wordpress ‘loop’, or the_excerpt() inside the loop. However, there are other wordpress functons which can be used to get excerpts, such as wp_trim_excerpt(), which will generate an excerpt from the post content rather than using the excerpt field. Themes could also remove all formatting and shortcodes from excerpts.

My excerpts contain shortcodes, but they aren’t showing up on my site – why?

Again, the way excerpts are displayed on your site, or whether they are displayed at all, is the responsibility of the theme you are using (and not this plugin).

If you have access to the theme files, there are a number of ways you can process shortcodes in excerpts, depending on the method used to display them in the theme. For instance, if the excerpt is added to pages/posts using the_excerpt(), you could change this to echo do_shortcode(get_the_excerpt()). Another approach would be to try the techniques outlined here:

I’m using another plugin which alters excertps in the WordPress Admin area, and this plugin disables these features – can this be fixed?

Other plugins which enhance the excerpt editor in some way will probably have issues with this plugin, as it removes and re-adds the excerpt editor meta box. The best solution would be to encourage the developers of the other plugin to utilise a rich text editor in their plugin (it isn’t hard!).